Crypto Trades Data

Crypto Trades Data API

Access historical cryptocurrency trades through REST, stream live executed trades with WebSocket, integrate with AI applications through the CoinAPI MCP Server, or consume market data through FIX.

CoinAPI provides normalized trade-level market data for building tick charts, execution analytics, market monitors, backtesting systems, and AI-driven financial applications.

What Is Crypto Trades Data?

Every time a buy order matches a sell order on a cryptocurrency exchange, an executed trade is created.

Unlike OHLCV candles, which summarize market activity over time, trades capture individual market executions. Each trade record contains the execution price, traded size, timestamps, and additional execution details when available.

This makes trades the foundation for applications that require transaction-level market activity. Instead of working with aggregated market summaries, developers can analyze how individual executions occurred across supported exchanges and markets.

Trade data is especially valuable when timing, sequence, and execution behavior matter. It helps reveal short-term price movement, market momentum, liquidity pressure, and whether buying or selling activity is driving the market.

Developers use crypto trades data for tick-by-tick analysis, real-time alerts, VWAP calculations, slippage studies, and high-frequency trading research.

Historical trades are important for backtesting strategies because they show the actual execution tape behind aggregated price movements.

When normalized across exchanges, trades data makes it easier to compare market activity across venues, pairs, and instruments without handling each exchange format separately.

What's Included in CoinAPI Trades Data?

Each CoinAPI trade represents a single executed market transaction and includes pricing information, timestamps, identifiers, and execution details.

FieldWhat it means
symbol_idCoinAPI normalized symbol identifier
time_exchangeTimestamp reported by the exchange
time_coinapiTimestamp when CoinAPI received the trade
uuidUnique CoinAPI trade identifier (UUIDv4)
priceExecuted transaction price
sizeBase asset amount traded
taker_sideTrade aggressor side when reported or estimated (BUY, SELL, BUY_ESTIMATED, SELL_ESTIMATED, UNKNOWN)
id_tradeExchange trade identifier when requested and available
sequenceWebSocket sequence number for the current connection

Together, these fields provide the information needed to build tick charts, analyze execution flow, monitor live markets, study market activity, and investigate how price movements developed over time.

Available REST Endpoints

CoinAPI provides REST endpoints for retrieving historical trades, the latest trades for a specific symbol, and the latest trades across multiple symbols. For applications requiring live execution data, trades are also available through the CoinAPI WebSocket API.

Historical Trades

Returns historical executed trades for a specific CoinAPI symbol. Data is returned in ascending chronological order.

Response includes
  • execution timestamps
  • transaction price
  • traded size
  • trade identifier
  • aggressor side when available

Use date to retrieve a full trading day, or time_start and time_end for custom ranges including cross-day queries. APITP data supports hourly retrieval with automatic fallback to daily data for older records. The limit parameter supports up to 100,000 items.

Latest Trades by Symbol

Returns the most recent trades for a specific CoinAPI symbol. Data is returned in descending chronological order, from newest to oldest.

Response includes
  • execution timestamps
  • transaction price
  • traded size
  • trade identifier
  • aggressor side when available

Latest trades include executions from up to 1 minute ago and support up to 100,000 returned records.

Latest Trades

Returns the latest executed trades across markets. Responses can be filtered using CoinAPI symbol identifiers.

Response includes
  • execution timestamps
  • transaction price
  • traded size
  • trade identifier
  • aggressor side when available

Latest trades are returned in descending chronological order. Symbol filtering supports comma- or semicolon-delimited identifiers.

Live Trade Streaming with WebSocket

For applications requiring real-time execution data, CoinAPI provides live trade streaming through the WebSocket API.

Unlike REST endpoints, which retrieve historical or recent executions, WebSocket streams trades in real time for subscribed symbols on supported exchanges.

Each trade message includes the execution price, traded size, timestamps, a unique trade identifier, sequence number, and the trade aggressor side when available.

When an exchange does not report the trade aggressor, CoinAPI may classify it as BUY_ESTIMATED or SELL_ESTIMATED using a proprietary algorithm. Depending on the exchange, the value may also be reported as UNKNOWN.

CoinAPI Trades Dataset Characteristics

  • Available through REST API, WebSocket API, the CoinAPI MCP Server, and FIX market data integration
  • Historical trades returned in ascending chronological order
  • Latest trades returned in descending chronological order
  • WebSocket streams trades in real time for subscribed symbols on supported exchanges
  • ISO 8601 UTC timestamps
  • Normalized CoinAPI symbol identifiers
  • Unique UUID identifier for every trade
  • Historical requests support up to 100,000 records
  • Optional exchange trade identifiers using include_id
  • Trade retrieval available through the CoinAPI MCP Server
  • FIX supports trade market data subscriptions

Why Developers Use Trades Instead of OHLCV

OHLCV summarizes market activity into fixed time intervals, making it ideal for charting and historical analysis. Trades capture individual market executions, providing the detail needed to understand how those candles were formed.

If you're building tick charts, execution analytics, or market microstructure research, trades are usually the better starting point. When you need compact historical data for visualization or technical indicators, OHLCV is often the more efficient choice.

If you need…Use
Individual market executionsTrades
Tick-level market replayTrades
Execution flow analysisTrades
Trade direction analysisTrades
Candlestick chartsOHLCV
Technical indicatorsOHLCV
Historical trend analysisOHLCV

Many production systems combine both datasets. Developers often use OHLCV to identify periods of interest, then retrieve trade data to inspect the individual executions behind significant market movements.

Crypto Trades Use Cases

  • Build tick charts
  • Analyze market executions
  • Backtest tick-level strategies
  • Monitor live market activity
  • Power AI trading applications
  • Research market microstructure

Who Uses Crypto Trades Data?

  • Trading platforms
  • Quantitative funds
  • Algorithmic trading systems
  • Fintech applications
  • AI and machine learning teams
  • Researchers and universities
Crypto Trades Data

Ready to Build with CoinAPI Trades Data?

Explore the Trades documentation to retrieve historical executions, latest market activity, and real-time trade streams using standardized CoinAPI symbols.

As your application evolves, combine Trades with OHLCV, Quotes, Order Books, Metadata, WebSocket streams, FIX, MCP, and Exchange Rates to build a complete cryptocurrency market data platform on top of the CoinAPI ecosystem.